BOSTON — President Barack Obama’s thrashing of Mitt Romney exposed glaring structural weaknesses in the GOP that will shut the Republicans out of the White House until they find a way to appeal to a rapidly changing America.

Battling a wheezing economy and a deeply motivated opposition, Obama still managed to retain much of his 2008 map because of the GOP’s deficiencies with the voters who are changing the political face of once conservative-leaning Virginia, Florida, Colorado and Nevada.

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Rove: GOP needs minorities

Huckabee slams GOP on minority outreach

Romney concedes to Obama

Republicans face a crisis: The country is growing less white, and their coalition has become more white in recent years.

In 2004, George W. Bush won 44 percent of Hispanics. Four years later, John McCain, the author of an immigration reform bill, took 31 percent of Hispanics. And this year, Romney captured only 27 percent of Hispanics.

“The conservative movement should have particular appeal to people in minority and immigrant communities who are trying to make it, and Republicans need to work harder than ever to communicate our beliefs to them,” said Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who will immediately be looked to as a potential 2016 presidential candidate.

But the GOP’s problem is more fundamental than one bloc of voters. For the second consecutive presidential election, the Republican got thumped among women and young voters in the states that decided the election.

“Our party needs to realize that it’s too old and too white and too male and it needs to figure out how to catch up with the demographics of the country before it’s too late,” said Al Cardenas, the head of the American Conservative Union and a longtime GOP leader. “Our party needs a lot of work to do if we expect to be competitive in the near future.”

Rep. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), a prospective 2014 statewide candidate in a state moving sharply to the middle, was just as blunt: “After tonight, the GOP had better figure out that a big tent sounds good, but if there aren’t any seats in it, what good is it.”

The desperate straits Republicans find themselves in are structural. But Romney should not be completely absolved of responsibility for his party’s ebb. He galloped to the right on immigration and reproductive issues in the GOP primary and only awkwardly attempted to move to the middle on those issues in the fall. His 50s-era persona was almost comically far removed from Americans who are in their 20s and 30s. And he never attempted to distance himself from or truly challenge a Republican Party that still bears bruises left from the Bush years.

But the rapidly growing population of minorities is something that looms larger than one flawed candidate.

Look no further than Florida, that reliable battleground that usually picks White House winners. Obama won there by only 2½ percentage points in 2008, but somehow found a way to eke out a narrow lead again in the face of 8.7 percent unemployment there.

Why? Partly because there are 190,000 more Hispanics and 50,000 more African-Americans in the state than there were in 2008.

Florida Republicans were staggered: Obama managed to actually increase a 20-point margin from 2008 in suburban Orlando’s Osceola County, home to thousands of Hispanic immigrants, to 25 points.

“Hispanics continue to grow in importance, and we need to embrace these voters for two reasons: It is simply the right thing to do, and it’s mandatory demographically if we are to avoid more presidential disappointments,” said former George W. Bush political director Matt Schlapp. “It’s about simple math and basic moral decency.”

How's it feel to lose an election with 8% unemployment? How's it feel to hate Latino's so loudly that they beat the pants off you and toss you out on your butt? How's it feel to blow another chance at the Senate, Tea Bags? How's all that hate working for you? How's that birtherism working for you. Got that Trump card, huh?

I beg you to PLEASE keep talking. Please keep pushing your meager, pathetic, old and tired party of pasty white men to the right. Right off the electoral map.

You got toasted tonight. And you and your small minds will try to blame it on the storm and Christie (wait, wasn't he your salvation two months ago?) and all the BS you spin. Karl Rove looked like a complete loser on FOX tonight almost begging for the math t change.

You are small people with small minds and you won't win a national election for a long time to come because you have leaders like Mitch McConnell and Jim DeMint who are toxic to anyone other than some dork with a confederate flag tattooed to his back.

“Our party needs to realize that it’s too old and too white and too male and it needs to figure out how to catch up what the demographics of the country before it’s too late,” said Al Cardenas, the head of the American Conservative Union and a longtime GOP leader.

The problem is not communication.

The problem is that many of the popular conservative beilfs on immigration and social-economic issues are simply out of step with where the nation is going as a whole.

If anything the insane clowns on the far right talking about their beliefs on rape show just how far out of the main stream they are.

Maybe buying into the freaks on your far right and center and left end of your party, their FRY MEXICANS BY ELECTRIFYING the FENCE !!!!! ISN'T a winning idiology. Just like the conservative FAILED TRICKLE DOWN ECONOMIC IDIOLOGY that Chaney and Bush bludgened American with.

Go aahead. Try and do another term of SABOTAGING THE LIVES OF AMERICAN PEOPLE with your traitorous obstruction and see what a pathetic lil MINORITY Party you are the NEXT TIME WE SLAP THE SNOTT OUT OF YOU !!!

Republicans congress is less popular with WE THE PEOPLE than FIDEL CASTRO !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Read it and weep.

WE THE PEOPLE , REJECTED EVERY STITCH OF YOUR CORRUPT BIGOTED AGENDA !

“The conservative movement should have particular appeal to people in minority and immigrant communities who are trying to make it, and Republicans need to work harder than ever to communicate our beliefs to them,” said Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.),

This is laughable. What beliefs does the GOP have that could possibly appeal to minorities and immigrants? Racism and deportation and building an electric fence? Tax breaks for the very very rich? Corporations are people?

The GOP has not one single idea that could possibly appeal to minorities (I include gays and women). It is utterly hijacked by the tiny Tea Party, as extremist a group of know-nothings as has emerged in modern American history. Rich right-wing Republicans bought the Tea Party, funded it, all for their own greedy selfish corporate interests, and they lost.

Americans aren't stupid.

If the Congressional Republicans don't settle down and cooperate with President Obama and their Democrat colleagues in the next two years to fix the problems in this country, then the GOP may find itself in a worse position than it's in today.

As for Rubio being a future leader of the GOP--or Christie, or Jindal, or Ryan--well, fine. If that's the best the GOP can do, fine. The GOP is the party of no substance, all PR (that's Public Relations, not Puerto Rican). Anti-gay, anti-immigrant, anti-abortion, anti-health care, anti-Medicare, anti-government, anti-everything. Not one single reaonable idea among the whole flaming group of them.

Racism and Fox News didn't work this time, and it will fail even more next time. Either the GOP moves into the mainstream and cooperates, or it goes into the wilderness.

“Our party needs to realize that it’s too old and too white and too male and it needs to figure out how to catch up what the demographics of the country before it’s too late,” said Al Cardenas, the head of the American Conservative Union and a longtime GOP leader.

We have finally reached the point where we have more people in the cart than pulling the cart and the people in the cart seem pathologically driven to use there electoral majority to demand more from those pulling the cart. The sad thing is those in the cart are ethnically and racially much different than those pulling the cart. Identity politics and popularism are the wave of the future, they are the cancer that Obama capitalized on to win this election and given birth rates and illegal immigration there is not going to be a return to the good old days.

To survive the GOP will have to emulate the conservative party in the UK, which is to just become another liberal party.

Now that the election is over, we need to come together as a country and... oh what the hell am I saying, I am just here to drink in the sweet, sweet tears of conservatives on the forums today. Delicious!

Like the conservative opposition here in my own country, US republicans have failed to move on from orthodoxies established in a post war (WWII) white male dominated anglophyllic version of history eschewing the natural evolution of local populations toward racial, cultural and ethnic diversity - an obvious bi-product of immigration. Likewise, the GOP is old, staid and fixated on the women in the home mindset. And while they embrace the kind of winner takes all, ethics free zone attitude you could expect from their corporate minders, sponsors and allies compromise will be a word missing from the GOP vocabulary.

The issue of sexual emancipation of minority segments of the population or the gay community that was always there but faced too many roadblocks to reveal itself (mostly from conservative, right wing evangelicals) also seems an incomprehensible reality to many die hard right wingers but a reality it is. The march of all these segments of the demographic is as unstoppable as it is inevitable. The question remains could the GOP ever consider, a gay atheist, female, hispanic or african american to run for congress the senate or even the presidency? Whilst they revile from even considering such a notion, their gaze will remain locked in the nostalgic past as will their electoral chances.The 1950's was a long time ago.

Like the conservative opposition here in my own country, US republicans have failed to move on from orthodoxies established in a post war (WWII) white male dominated anglophyllic version of history eschewing the natural evolution of local populations toward racial, cultural and ethnic diversity - an obvious bi-product of immigration. Likewise, the GOP is old, staid and fixated on the women in the home mindset. And while they embrace the kind of winner takes all, ethics free zone attitude you could expect from their corporate minders, sponsors and allies compromise will be a word missing from the GOP vocabulary.

The issue of sexual emancipation of minority segments of the population or the gay community that was always there but faced too many roadblocks to reveal itself (mostly from conservative, right wing evangelicals) also seems an incomprehensible reality to many die hard right wingers but a reality it is. The march of all these segments of the demographic is as unstoppable as it is inevitable. The question remains could the GOP ever consider, a gay atheist, female, hispanic or african american to run for congress the senate or even the presidency? Whilst they revile from even considering such a notion, their gaze will remain locked in the nostalgic past as will their electoral chances.The 1950's was a long time ago.

The GOP must stop using their VP selections to pander for votes. In 2008, McCain picked Palin in an effort to attract female voters. That failed. Now Romney picks Ryan in order to steal Wisconsin. Again, it failed.

In 2008, Jr. Sen. Obama had little foreign policy experience. For his running mate, he selected the former chair of the Senate Foreign Relations committee.

GOP, stop picking VP's who you think will help you get elected. Pick VP's who can help you govern! You're underestimating the electorate.

Conservatives and Republicsns may be out of step with socio economic changes. But the concern is that the changes may be out of step with continued American Prosperity and leadership. All you have to do is look at the out of wedlock birth rates and high school drop out rates. The changing demographics and the future won't be good for your generation. Changing Demographics have not helped Detroit or any other major city.

It's a divded nation. Seems to this Independent that the soul searching should be with the Democrat leaders as to why that is.

But of coarse this is a Jon martin article and it's all the GOP's fault all the time. Obama has to go back to a job, no campaigning included this time.... knowing he got less than 50% of America's support and lost 2 states and a landslide popular vote he had in 2008.

All with a dirty low campaign. Romney is right. We need to pray for Obama. The next 4 years he can't blame Bush or anyone else, so the question is will Obama ever take responsibility?